The Last Living Slut (28 page)

I was not in any way attracted to him sexually, however. Even his rock-star status didn’t excite me. But Abigail and Ostara were salivating from the corner of the room. As one chipmunk-cute stripper got the most attention, the two of them seethed in the background.

“I’m gonna have some fun tonight!” Sebastian said in a singsong voice. The stripper giggled, young and devoid of rock history and Sebastian Bach.

The rest of Sebastian’s band mooched around like unwanted gristle to Sebastian’s lean, raw steak. They were outgrown, hairy beasts, and I wanted them to leave. Warren watched Abigail like an obsessed teenager, and I knew tonight was the last night they’d be together. She didn’t give a shit. She was gonna fuck Sebastian one way or another. She lay back and put her legs in the air, and right away Ostara got on her knees and started to lap up her pussy. My girls—I was so proud of them. They were both after Sebastian like frenzied terriers in heat, caged and unfed for days. Abigail threw her head back with a curdling yowl, which made Ostara lap her up even more. Suddenly, Sebastian’s attention snapped to them. He began goading them on, whooping and cheering. The strippers were instantly forgotten. Not knowing what to do, they quietly dispersed. It floored me that all it took to grip the attention of any man was a bit of cliché hardcore girl-on-girl action—even if he had strippers on his lap. I started laughing at the predictable simplicity of it all.

I uncrossed my unpantied legs, exposing my bare crotch. “What are
you
gonna do, Miss Sharon Stone?” Sebastian chortled.

I was bored of waiting for Dizzy, and paranoia began to gnaw at my insides, whispering that Dizzy was fucking someone in the dressing room. So I locked eyes with the shampoo-ad boy, my chin in my palm, and replied, “What do you want me to do, Sebastian?”

I knew how to get my girls off. I grabbed Ostara’s hips from behind and went down on her as she licked away at Abi. My vibrator was in my bag, and Sebastian grabbed it and started sticking it into me.

The dressing room doors were open, and within a few minutes I started panicking that either Del or one of the Guns N’ Roses guys would walk in and see. Here I was, fooling around with my girlfriends in Sebastian’s room—with the backstage pass Dizzy gave me.

My instincts were right. My legs were wide open, and Sebastian was pushing in the vibrator, when Axl suddenly appeared in the doorway like the Phantom of the Opera. He was wearing shades, and his strawberry-red hair, which I’d loved for so long, was neatly bunched in cornrows and pulled back in a shoulder-length ponytail. He was wearing a leather jacket and ripped jeans, his body packed tight like meat into clean, crisp designer wear.

I shut my legs as fast as a whip and covered my breasts. “No, I don’t want to,” I said firmly, standing up and fumbling to put my corset and skirt back on. I didn’t want Axl to see me this way, amid this disarray of stacked flesh. I walked over to him, smiled, and said, “Hi.”

Then I shook his hand and told him something else: “Thank you for inspiring so many volcanic orgasms in me since the age of thirteen.”

He smiled. “I’m flattered,” he said.

I lifted up my skirt and asked him to sign his name, because I wanted to get it tattooed. Someone handed him a black marker and he signed my flower.

Later that night at the hotel, the signature was rubbed off when Dizzy made love to me.

Chapter 45

I would never Hurt You. I would never Fuck with Your Head and Heart like Those Other Guys have.

S
hortly after Axl branded me, Dizzy texted that he was back at the hotel. He wanted to know whether I would come over. “Either way, I dig you,” he wrote.

Ostara and Abigail wanted Sebastian so badly, they were tugging at my skirt to go with them to his hotel. So I decided to join them—because they told me there was going to be a big party and because I thought I might catch a glimpse of Axl there.

The “ugly syndrome” is what we call the bewildering phenomenon that occurs when rock stars pick the ugliest girl out of a group of super-hot women. It’s ridiculous, but also perhaps understandable because the ugliest girls are the most grateful. They don’t expect much, and therefore they’ll put up with anything. In other words, they’re the easiest lay.

So that night, the ugly syndrome struck again, and Sebastian chose to focus on the lumpy, greasy, ponytailed catering girl over all of the sexy strippers—and over Ostara and Abigail. My gob was smacked. But I understood.

We followed Seb and his ugly, annoying band to the van Warren had ordered. He was sedate and defeated after having seen Abigail be herself: a tiger. As we neared the Hilton Hotel in Birmingham where Sebastian was staying, I realized there wasn’t going to be any party, and Seb’s band had brought us there only because they thought we would sleep with them. How dare they think I would fuck any of them? They were gross, slimy, creepy, and repulsive. Even if they were beautiful, it wouldn’t have mattered. I wanted to be with Dizzy.

I found myself back at the Malmaison again. In the lobby, I saw Dizzy sitting with the stripper girls Sebastian had dismissed. Jealousy like I’d never known blinded me; I went weak at the shock of it. How dare those whores think they could even try and get Dizzy! I walked slowly up to him.

“Hey, you came!” He looked tired, but so damn happy to see me. I had actually missed him. I sat in his lap and draped myself all over him, giving him a kiss while a brunette stripper shot vitriolic looks in my direction.

“It’s
so
good to see you,” I said, and I meant it. I wanted to be blanketed in his comfort.

“I brought my schoolgirly friend like you asked me to,” I whispered, pointing at Ostara. “Do you like her?” All I wanted was to make him happy and keep him interested in me. He glanced at Ostara and looked pleased. I was relieved.

“Shall we go back to your room,
hon-eee
?” I soaked every word in raunchy syrup, just to annoy the strippers.

“Yeah, let’s go,” he said. His bandmates looked at him in envy: having been in Guns N’ Roses for sixteen years, he automatically got more pussy than them. The brunette stripper was left with Chris Pitman.

Dizzy’s room still displayed his devout loyalty to Jägermeister, which occupied every corner like it was nectar for soothing a cold. It was the first time I’d had hard alcohol in a while, and it was syrupy and delicious. He was tired but he got on the phone straightaway to order room service for Ostara and me. We couldn’t decide what we wanted, so Dizzy ordered nearly everything on the menu, allowing us to pick and choose.

Ostara drew a bath and a musky smell filled the air. I flopped down on the bed, exhausted.

“Are you gonna get in the bath, too?” Dizzy whispered hopefully to me as Ostara cooed from the blur of raw velvety steam.

“No, I’m really tired,” I mumbled sleepily. “I’m just gonna rest a bit. You should get in with Ostara. I don’t mind.”

Of course, I
did
mind. I wanted him to be with me, not her, even though she was my friend and I loved her. But I had to demonstrate that I was a maestro in the rules of groupiedom, that I hadn’t let myself become emotionally attached in any way, that I was okay with sharing. But, in my heart, I wanted to see if he would fuck her in there without me.

As Dizzy got in the bath with Ostara, I lay in bed, still as meat. Every second ripped my insides to shreds, but I had to stay strong in this boot camp because this was the game, and I was not to get emotionally attached to a guy in a band. This was rock ‘n’ roll.

But I was so upset, I wanted to die.

After only three or four minutes, Dizzy came to me. I was lying facedown on the bed, my neck growing stiff from keeping still. But I didn’t turn because I didn’t want to show him I cared. He climbed on the bed beside me and just held me in silence, laying kisses all over my face. I turned around.

“Why didn’t you stay in the bath with Ostara?” I whispered. I wanted to be casual, but I was shaking.

“Because I wanted to be with you. Just with you,” he whispered back. And it was then that I knew. I knew I fucking loved him. There was a naked, young blonde in the bath, and Dizzy could have had her, but he came to me. He just wanted to be with me. I was falling for him so fucking hard and I hated it. This wasn’t part of the game, but that feeling of love just swept over me, and right there, at that moment, I felt safe and whole, and sure he would never hurt me.

“I’m gonna sleep on the sofa so you guys can have some space together,” Ostara said. She got out of the bath and curled up like a newborn kitten in the corner of the sofa. Ostara, the sweetest angel and the most loyal friend anyone could ever wish for.

That night, I felt a degree of intimacy I’d never experienced before—the kind that can only be achieved one-on-one. But in the back of my mind I knew I was letting my barriers down too fast, and I cursed myself for it. I needed to keep my guard up because I had to live in reality.

“You know, you can have Ostara if you want,” I said to him. “Would you like me to get her?”

“So you don’t want to be with me alone, is that it?” He looked hurt.

“Come on, I do like you. But I
can’t
like you.”

Dizzy sat up and took a big swig from a bottle of bourbon by the bedside. He looked really pissed off. “Fuck! Why?” he spat out the words.

“You’re in a band. You live in LA. This is just fun and sex.” I couldn’t let my heart get hurt.

“So you can’t like me
because I’m in a band
? Fuck!” He looked so upset. I didn’t understand why he didn’t see the reality of the situation, why he couldn’t just leave things as they were so that no one would get hurt.

“We can’t get involved with guys in a band,” Ostara said from the corner, echoing my case. “It’s just rock ‘n’ roll. It’s just fun and that’s it.”

“I would never hurt you,” he said. “I would never fuck with your head and heart like those other guys have. Can’t you just believe that I like you? Fuck.”

I really wanted to believe him. It felt so good just to let go and be the innocent me again—to reject the cynicism and the bitter liquid rush of rumor, suspicion, and resentment that prevailed in the rock scene. It was like he wanted to
prove himself
to me. Yet I didn’t understand why he liked me so much. He touched me, kissed my face, and looked at me when we had sex. My body burned like a furnace. I had never been so turned on. It was the first time I’d felt security and trust. I was opening up and letting go, and it was so freeing to feel safe with a man who I liked and who liked me.

I opened myself wider to him, as if to absorb his being into me. He ground himself in me so hard that a volcano exploded lava and fireballs in my tummy, and I screamed, my vagina convulsing as I came so hard I cried. It was the best sex I’d ever had.

“I want to come inside you again,” he said.

“I want you to. I want you to come in me.” And I felt him explode in me. He looked at me. He looked beautiful. And we both just smiled. I put my legs up and let his cum rush through my body. He held my hand and we fell asleep in each other’s arms. I had crossed the line I had once drawn for myself.

I awoke to the phone ringing.

“Your friend is gonna get raped,” Del said when I picked up. “She’s walking around the hotel naked.”

I always had to babysit her. I knew this would happen. She always got like this after the evil drink.

“Stay in bed,” Del said. “I’ll bring her to your room.”

Abigail was naked, except for her cowboy boots. Her tits, ballooned and tanned, had handprints on them. Her platinum-blond hair was matted and congealed around her face. Del smirked as he looked at the scene sprawled before him: Dizzy with three naked chicks. It paid to have endured sixteen years of Axl: you got more pussy coming at you.

I placed Abi next to the sofa and put a burger in her hand to help her absorb the alcoholic spew. I could smell roadie sperm on her. Or maybe it was Sebastian’s band. I was so disappointed in her. She fell asleep sitting up, still clasping the burger. I pried it away from her, then I climbed back into bed with Dizzy and went back to sleep.

The next day, as soon as I returned home, a text from Dizzy appeared on my phone: “I can still smell your body. It’s in my hair. Come see me. I miss your body, eyes, hair, boobs . . . all of u. And just so you know, I do dig u, and I would never fuck with your head and I would never fuck you over.”

I slept sweetly that night. But at around four a.m., Dizzy called. He sounded upset. He was in Nottingham, and he wanted me to come join him. I imagined girls lurking there, stumbling in and out of his room, and camouflaging themselves in his wardrobe as we spoke. But he didn’t seem to have anyone else there. His voice was pleading, reeking of neediness. We talked on the phone for an hour; he snapped at me angrily, pleading with me not to break his heart, not to let him down.

“Fucking blow me off then,” he said. “I treat you good, unlike those piece-of-shit men who have fucked you over in the past.”

“I really like you, too, but you live in LA. What do you expect to happen between us?”